Content provided in partnership with

Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy

ArtForum, Dec, 1993 by Ann Marlowe

In this loosely connected group of essays, which span the Central Park jogger attack, the 2 Live Crew obscenity trial, and the relationship of rap to Black Studies, Houston Baker proves that there is nothing so deadly as an academic off his turf. Though he goes out of his way to blast "scholars who start in the middle of the game and witness themselves as 'experts,'" Baker, the 1992 president of the Modern Language Association and chaired professor of human relations at the University of Pennsylvania, gives the impression he has just discovered rap, wielding its catchphrases with the fervor of a new convert. "It seems high time, then . . . to get seriously busy about the business of Black Studies for the '90s--to bust a move and rigorously bring the scholarly noise for a new generation." Or, "As Public Enemy might make the point: 'It's like that ya'll!'" Numerous errors in detail don't increase Baker's credibility: NWA's first album isn't titled Straight Out'a Compton but Straight Outta Compton. Run-D.M.C. are cited several times as "Run DMC." "KRS-one" should be "KRS-One." "In effect" does not mean "undisciplined."

Most Popular Articles in Arts: Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism; Free-standing cardboard sculpture; What makes a successful business person? Business people who are tops in ...; Take advantage of local advertising: TV, newspaper or magazines? If your ...; Tino Sehgal at the ICA; More »

This is surface irritation, but a great deal of conceptual confusion also beckons. At the start of a chapter on the Central Park jogger attack, Baker tells us that NWA "produced the spectacular album Straight Out'a Compton . . . and gave an impetus to 'gangster rap' and anti-establishment expressivity." Ignoring the violent misogyny of this and other examples of "gangsta rap" (as well as the complexities of the obvious identification with the aggressor they represent), Baker concludes that "no one could provide a sufficient 'why'" for the attack. Yet when he condemns 2 Live Crew, Baker says that "common sense alone suggests such a correlation" between misogynistic speech and practice.

Or consider Baker's reasoning on censorship. Characterizing 2 Live Crew as "understandably banned," Baker does not address the libertarian position that even if there is a connection between misogynist speech and practice, we as a society may wish to accept this result of our tradition of championing free speech. "If you set out purposely to contest the law, to offend the standard . . . then how can you yell 'foul' when the law slaps you" is meant as an I-told-you-so to 2 Live Crew, but could as well be a conservative voice from the days of the Civil Rights struggle, asking what else could those pushy types who insisted on sitting in the front of the bus have expected than to be thrown into jail.

The strongest chapter, "The Black Urban Beat," does provide a fresh context for the Central Park jogger rape. Examining the socioeconomic place of the park, and of urban parks in general (including their role as incubators of rap), Baker notes that Central Park is "valorized" urban space; an assault there receives far more attention than one in public schools or housing. But when Baker attempts to extend what seemed a promising metaphor of public space to his discussion of rap, boom boxes, and the censorship of 2 Live Crew, his argument trails off into uplifting, and nearly indecipherable, banalities: "Positive sites of rap represent, I think a profitable, agential resource for an alternative American legality." Sentences like this one make you wonder why a writer who insists on his populism and uses rap to communicate with students is so prone to circumlocution and pretentious jargon.

What's most disappointing is Baker's superficial attention to the post-Modernism of rap as an art form. Yes, Baker uses the word: "by postmodern I intend the nonauthoritative collaging or archiving of sound and styles that bespeaks a deconstructive hybridity." He also states that rap is "the 'in effect' archive where postmodernism has been dopely sampled for the international nineties." But Baker's sadly superficial effort to celebrate rap as a positive African-American art form seems to prevent him from acknowledging some of rap's most interesting contradictions. What's crucial to rap as compared with, say, rock or country music, is "suppression of depth," as in Fredric Jameson's phrase. Rap is fascinating not only because, as Baker notes, it collages, but because it homogenizes and flattens the affect of its samples. Rap is also euphoric in just the way Jameson identifies as post-Modern, but Baker quotes its exuberant wordplay without addressing the contrast between this playfulness and rap's often grim scenarios. After all, the world of rap is one in which human beings are alone, for all the thanks to God on even the hardest-core rapper's CD sleeves.

These contradictions and nuances of rap surely deserve consideration, but you will not find it here.

Ann Marlowe writes for LA Weekly and The Village Voice.

Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy

ArtForum, Dec, 1993 by Ann Marlowe

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Health

Most Popular Articles in Arts

Most Popular Publications in Arts